Pricing, tiers, TOTL, etc. - What is the *material* difference?

[castleofargh]

Well I presumed (I obviously presume too much) that each would be powered and tuned to an optimum and then compared. I was sure someone with experience would be able to say - 'that's a planar' or that's the dd, but some of you tell me that's not so.



Campfire Andromeda's are an all ba and you couldn't say their treble is rolled off.
Planars have weirdo treble? They're actually now making many high end (read expensive) hybrid iem's with a small planar just for the treble.

We can very well take your conditions, I see no issue picking the conditions you're interested in, but then you have to agree that we add even more variables. Are we hearing the BA sound or the 3 to 5 ways sound? Are we hearing sealed VS vented? How could we tell which variable or series of variables have led to our experience(assuming we already dealt with non audio biases and stuff like massive differences in sensitivity or absurd listening levels. I suggested a similar single driver to remove one variable, that's all.

As for my intuition of differences, there is nothing to defend or object to, I have no proof, and when I have, they're anecdotal for, again, maybe 3 or 5 pairs. I almost only buy BA IEMs as I generally only care about the isolation when I'm on the go. I do have a few small DD IEMs that also isolate well, like shure se215 and one or 2 etymotics that aren't BA based. But that's rare and not a selection made for sound quality. I like well vented sound, and when I get that from an IEM, said IEM remains in a drawer because I have no use for it. I've never owned a planar IEM myself, only heard 2 very briefly(why my brain reaches out to headphone and speaker planar to invent rules I don't know about).

 

[gregorio]

Argue? I was seeking to understand and thought you would provide some info on the subject

1. Yes, argue. You stated that “definitely” there is an audible characteristic difference between IEMs due to driver type. You then doubled down when asked for evidence. That is not “seeking to understand”, it’s an assertion of fact, an absolute one! An actual example of “seeking to understand” is your quote below, it’s phrased as a question, it ends with a question mark and there’s no “definitely” assertion in there!
2. I don’t have any particularly useful information to provide, beyond the obvious basic facts that IEMs (as all transducers) have to be coupled with something that is highly variable (in this case, an ear canal or coupler that is only vaguely similar to an ear canal) but unlike other transducers cannot be decoupled for objective measurement purposes and there are other variables besides just driver type. I’ve made it clear more than once that I have no expertise/knowledge beyond these basics, I even had to go and look up what “711” actually measures, because I didn’t know.

So if iem's with a single dd, ba's or a planar were tested for differences (without knowing which was played), there would be differences but you wouldn't be able to pick out the planar or others?

I don’t know! On the balance of probabilities I would guess probably not but a “balance of probabilities” doesn’t tell us whether that is actually the case and it tells us even less when my knowledge of the variables and probabilities is relatively poor to start with! So in this case, while my guess might be somewhat useful for my personal purposes, my honest answer to others would HAVE to be; “I don’t know”. My guess is more than open to any reliable evidence that can be presented but until then, the principles of science dictate that without reliable evidence claims be treated false.

G

 

[castleofargh]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, the IEC 711 coupler is the old standard that even the poor with cheap Chinese copy( this guy ) have mostly dropped in the last years for newer ones.
And to be clear, when the 711 specs mentioned having a narrow range(I don't remember exactly, but it was, like, up to 8 or 10kHz?), it only meant that the impedance characteristics above that frequency range stopped tracking with the average human reference they had made from a bunch of cadavers or whatever method they used back then. It's still measuring something, obviously. We just can't interpret too much about what it means for that imaginary average human dummy. More modern couplers keep extending the range(but the reference itself might not be exactly the same for different brands of dummies heads and rigs). Some now have ear canals that bend instead of the old straight tube. The aim is still to try and get some model of what the statistically average human might get at his eardrum. And the stuff that Headfi got a few years back, had the new benefit of giving slightly more consistent results at higher frequencies or something like that(not sure how that's achieved).
Personally I don't bother too much with that because while I sure value anything bringing a little more repeatability, my own ears do have big treble fluctuations from the slightest placement change.
And then the coupler and mic that Harman used for their famous curves, is one that few people were using, so that caused another mess where everybody started applying some graph they got, right onto their coupler measurements. We keep telling people not to make comparisons between measurements made on different rigs, and what did nearly every reviewer and headphone/IEM measurement website did, put a curve from another rig over their own measurements to show the Harman target reference... not great.

 

[bigshot]

I don't have any evidence to present.

then why do you keep talking?

 

[Ryokan]

then why do you keep talking?

To read replies from the experts here and realise I have some pre-conceived ideas about audio. What's your excuse?

 

[bigshot]

Keep at that.